Monday, August 31, 2015

Last week, Tony Turner -- who wrote the protest song Harperman -- was suspended from his job. Turner is a federalist scientist, whose job is to track migratory bird species. He knows what's been happening at Environment Canada. Michael Harris writes:

I have it on good authority that Turner, an expert in the highly
controversial field of bird migrations, was also recently caught smiling
at his desk. There are even nasty rumours circulating that he laughed
at the Great Navigator during a clandestine lunch with other seditious
critics of the government.

And they call this a breach of the code of values and ethics for a civil
servant. Say what? How about Harper’s inner circle and members of
his PMO senior staff? In Harperland, criticism set to music is worse
than lying, cheating, bribery, breach of trust and peaking into other
people’s forensic briefs?

Never mind that the Supreme Court has found that civil servants are within their rights to express opinions during an election campaign. Mr. Harper has no use for a court which consistently finds his legislation unconstitutional.

But perhaps it goes deeper than that. Mr. Harper is known for attempting reedy-voiced covers of old Beatles tunes. Turner is obviously a better musician -- and, I daresay, scientist -- than Mr. Harper. Perhaps it's a case of professional envy. And Mr. Turner writes his own material.

As the Duffy trial has made clear, everybody in the Harper government has to read the lines the PMO has written for them. Everybody sings from the same songbook -- except Mr. Turner.

Sunday, August 30, 2015

Jeffrey Simpson writes that Stephen Harper's core of support is six percent:

After all, Conservative bedrock support is reckoned to be about 30 per
cent, or maybe a trifle higher. So if only 6 per cent of respondents
said the trial improved their opinion of the government, we’re talking
about only a fifth of the core. Yikes.

Consider the picture of this government which has emerged in the wake of the evidence:

The Duffy trial turned reality on its
head. The trial was supposed to be about him and his behaviour, and from
the point of view of justice it so remains. But the media focus was on
the Prime Minister’s Office, whose staffers were cross-examined. What
that focus revealed was profoundly disquieting and completely
unflattering. No wonder by an almost 9-1 margin their evidence at the
trial left negative rather than positive impressions of the government.

Let’s
remember that Mr. Duffy was placed in the Senate by the Conservatives
because he would help them raise money and good cheer. Period. He would
do their political bidding, happily and helpfully. He would shill. He
was not there for policy expertise or sober second thought. He was like
many senators: appointed to render faithful service to the party that
made him a senator.

You would think that the trial would do Harper in:

The majority of Canadians do not find
credible the testimony that the Prime Minister remained completely
ignorant of what has happening, when everyone around him knew. His chief
of staff, his deputy chief of staff, his issues-management guy were all
either involved in the scheme or knew about it.

According
to sworn testimony, his current chief of staff, Ray Novak, did know
about payments to Mr. Duffy, despite various assertions of his
ignorance. Indeed, so many contradictions emerged from the evidence that
it became almost impossible to know who was telling the truth.

But, if the polls are correct, there are a lot more than 6% of the population that will vote for Mr. Harper. You have to wonder. Are at least 30% of us fools?

Saturday, August 29, 2015

Justin Trudeau, Tom Walkom writes, has done the country a favour. For the last two decades, the word "deficit" has been synonymous with "doom." But the two words are not synonyms. And now is the time to run a deficit:

But economists of all political stripes agree
that if government is ever going to spend money on things like bridges
and sewers, now is the time to do it.

First the spending is needed. Torontonians
found that out last winter when the bitter cold caused ancient water
pipes around the city to fracture.

Second, interest rates are at rock-bottom
lows. As the U.S. economist Paul Krugman notes in his New York Times
column, the world is awash in capital. Investing in public works is a
much better use for this capital than, say, stock market speculation.

Third, the Canadian economy is stagnant. It
may or may not be in recession (my guess is that we did suffer a
recession in the first six months of the year but are now out of it).

Neo-liberals have convinced voters that governments are like households. Households have to balance budgets. But, in hard economic times, government debt can stimulate an economy and help households balance their books.

Prime Minister Harper was absolutely gleeful when Trudeau said he was willing to run a deficit -- something Harper has done, better than any prime minister in Canadian history. But that deficit was caused as much by tax cuts as it was by the global recession.

He won't tell you that, of course. Honesty is not his strong suite. The Duffy Trial has underscored that point. And the NDP has bought into the neo-liberal characterization of deficits. Now the Liberals are to the left of the NDP.

Friday, August 28, 2015

Stephen Harper has become a law unto himself. The evidence, Michael Harris writes, is incontrovertible:

The evidence from the near past is damning enough: Found in contempt of
Parliament; breaking his own elections law; sending unconstitutional
legislation to the Supreme Court; passing retroactive laws to make the
illegal legal; publicly attacking the Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court; forcing out Canada’s Nuclear Safety Commissioner for following
the statute governing her agency; dumping the Parliamentary Budget
Officer for correcting the government’s false program costings; usurping
some of the constitutional functions of the Governor-General; and
passing legislation to punish political enemies such as unions and
environmentalists.

But on the day that Chris Woodcock testified, Harper's disregard for the rules was on full display:

Only a leader with a sense of narcissistic exceptionalism could send a
senior PMO staffer (and now campaign worker), to engage in a
conversation with a sworn witness during a recess at a criminal trial.
After all, Harper and his own office are smack in the middle of this
evidentiary mud bath. What’s next, a visit to the judge’s chambers?

No appearance of witness tampering here. It's not a problem for a man and an office which lacks a conscience. Consider Woodcock's performance on the stand:

Woodcock inadvertently gave Canadians an insight into the
blank-screen amorality at the heart of Harper’s political operation. He
admitted to being ethically uncomfortable about “locking in” the
Deloitte audit as part of the plan to contain the Duffy expense scandal.
But when Bayne asked him if he’d said anything about those ethical
misgivings, he replied no. Why would he?

Woodcock said he didn’t have the slightest problem with crafting
those political lies known in Harperland as “communications lines” to
make it appear that Duffy was repaying the money. This is a
say-anything-do-anything crowd. Don’t forget, Nigel Wright himself
divided lies into good and bad “misrepresentations”.

To them, there are clearly important and unimportant deceptions. How are Canadians to trust people like that?

Some lies are perfectly acceptable. Obviously, they've read Leo Strauss and taken his advice. And that's why they have to be turfed.

Thursday, August 27, 2015

In his latest column, Tim Harper recounts his frustrated and frustrating attempts to talk to Conservative candidates across the country:

I never met Mike Little, the Conservative candidate in the key riding of
Burnaby North-Seymour. I met every other candidate but Little had
personal considerations so he couldn’t meet me. His campaign ignored my
entreaties anyway until I was about to leave Vancouver, when I got a
noncommittal statement on an environmental issue.

In Edmonton-Mill Woods, the campaign of Tim Uppal told me the minister
of state for multiculturalism couldn’t meet me because he was too busy
meeting voters. That wouldn’t be so odd, except I had first requested
time with him dating back to June, before the election was even called.

After I called candidate Naval Bajaj on his
cellphone, he agreed readily to an interview, but when I arrived at the
strip mall that housed his campaign office a week later, it had been
mysteriously cancelled.
Like Uppal, a campaign aide told me he was too
busy meeting voters. So, I offered to come back later that evening.
Meeting voters, I was told. The next day? Meeting voters. The next
evening? Meeting voters.

Other journalists have had the same response to their requests for interviews:

Globe and Mail writer-at-large John Ibbitson reported on the weekend
that he could not get an interview with the Conservative candidate in
Mississauga Centre, and Glen McGregor of the Ottawa Citizen was told by
the office of Don Valley North Conservative candidate Joe Daniel that he
would not be doing any interviews until after the election.

If there is one thing the Duffy trial has made clear, its that Harper candidates are kept on a short leash. And if -- like Mike Duffy, Brent Rathgeber or Bill Casey -- they break ranks, the PMO will spare no effort to destroy them.

Which leaves one to ask two questions: Why would any semi-intelligent person want to be a Conservative candidate? And why would any semi-intelligent person vote for a Conservative candidate?

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

This is no ordinary election. Ralph Surette has been around quite awhile and he's seen a lot of governments. And, he writes, the Harper government is no ordinary government because of

its bewitching power, now installed in the Canadian psyche, capable of
leaving even the opposition parties afraid of its power over public
opinion, and functioning beyond the grasp of the mass media that have,
to date, been incapable of telling the real story about Harper. For
those who go on, sometimes in awed tones, about how Harper has "changed
Canada," this is mainly how he's changed it -- by snuffing open debate.

Mr. Harper's propaganda machine is "a thing of manipulative genius:"

It functions over the heads of both the opposition and the media, which
have failed to bring him to book on the big issues and have, to date,
served his purposes -- especially the big TV networks -- despite the
snarling of the Tory base about the "liberal media."

Harper's right-wing radicalism -- especially the rich store of extreme
statements from when he was head of the right-wing National Citizens'
Coalition -- gets a pass. Another instance of this emerged recently in
the dispute with Ontario, in which Harper refuses to dovetail the Canada
Pension Plan with Ontario's proposed plan. It turns out that Harper
once declared both the CPP and Old Age Security to be "tax grabs" that
should be done away with.

That machine is now firmly ensconced in Ottawa. The only way to get rid of it and the rot that has infected Ottawa -- rot which has been publicly on display at the Duffy trial -- is to thoroughly fumigate the place:

What's needed is not just the defeat of a government, but a cleansing of the broader scourge of a corrosive ideology.

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

We learned last week that the Prime Minister ignored the advice of his in-house lawyer. Alan Freeman writes:

When Perrin was asked by Harper’s then-chief of staff Nigel Wright to
look into the whole issue of residency requirements for senators — just
as the Mike Duffy expense scandal was catching fire in early 2013 — he
soon found himself blindsided by the PMO’s other constitutional expert … Harper himself.

Perrin tried to object to his boss’s wobbly legal theory, but his
carefully considered arguments soon ended up where all advice goes when
it counters Harper’s will: the shredder. In the Harper PMO, the prime
minister’s version of reality is the only one that matters. “The office
obviously acts of the direction of the prime minister so his written
word stands,” Perrin testified. End of discussion. Perrin was soon back
at UBC.

Really smart leaders surround themselves with smart people who help them make decisions. But not Mr. Harper:

What’s truly remarkable about Stephen Harper’s one-man rule of Canada
is that he really does seem to believe he is the ultimate autodidact — a
master of all aspects of government policy, no matter how complex or
obscure. He has experts on staff but, you see, he doesn’t really need them. And he can dispense with their advice when it becomes inconvenient.

But while Harper can claim some knowledge of economics by virtue of
his master’s degree, since when is he an expert on constitutional law?
Or climate science? Or statistics? Has he been going to night school
without anyone noticing? Again and again, we’ve seen Harper personally
determine government policy on his own, largely ignoring the views of
experts — and certainly passing over any mumbled objections from his
petrified cabinet ministers and shell-shocked caucus members.

The man who stubbornly refuses to take the advice of smart people -- people who know about things he knows nothing about -- is not a smart man.

Monday, August 24, 2015

Given evidence which emerged last week at the Duffy trial, the NDP's Charlie Angus has written to RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson, asking why Nigel Wright was not charged with offering a bribe. Could it be that the Commissioner is under Mr. Harper's thumb? Given the record, Michael Harris writes, it's beginning to look like the entire force may be acting as Mr. Harper's private security detail:

The hallmark of the Harper era has been an attempt by the government to
take ownership of all federal human assets in a degrading and political
way. Civil servants have been used as props in fake TV news items. The
justice department has drafted a string of unconstitutional legislation
reflecting the CPC’s ideological agenda. Federal scientists have been
muzzled like unruly dogs.

But one of the most disturbing elements of this tyrannical capture of
every aspect of the machinery of government is the increasingly
partisan behaviour of the RCMP. The Force has been used against

Harper’s
political enemies, often without a shred of real misconduct on the
table.
Helena Guergis was harassed for three months by a seven-member team
of Mounties who found absolutely no truth to the criminal (and
defamatory) allegations laid out in a letter written for the PM by Novak
to the Commissioner of the RCMP.

The Force has never explained why that investigation got off the
ground when all of the allegations were not only spurious but originated
with highly dubious sources. In fact, Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson
directly called the source of the allegations against Guergis and
decided on the spot there was no grounds for an investigation.

Bill Casey, the former Conservative MP and now Liberal candidate was
thrown out of caucus because he would not agree to changes in the
Atlantic Accord made unilaterally by the Harper government. Casey wasn’t
just being grumpy. He had consulted with officials in the department of
justice and they provided him with written opinions that the agreement
had in fact been altered.

In a personal meeting with Casey, Harper dismissed the legal
opinions with the view that the words meant what he, the PM, said they
meant. Either Casey voted for the budget or he was out. When Casey chose
to run as an Independent, he was faced with an RCMP investigation
alleging that he had stolen funds from his former Electoral District
Association.

As with Guergis, it was an entirely baseless accusation. But neither
the government nor the RCMP showed the slightest remorse, even though
Casey the victorious Independent MP raised the matter in the House of
Commons and demanded an apology. He is still waiting for it.

And, recently, we discovered that the Mounties had shredded documents from the gun registry, even though the Information Commissioner was conducting an active investigation which required access to those documents. The government's most recent omnibus budget bill contained a clause absolving the Mounties from any illegal activity.

If the national police force is the servant of the prime minister and not the servant of the people, we are in deep, deep trouble.

Sunday, August 23, 2015

The CBC has obtained a review of Canada's retirement system which was done for the Privy Council Office. The document has been heavily redacted. But its conclusions are clear:

"In 2010, Canada spent 5.0 per cent of GDP on public pensions
(OAS/GIS and C/QPP), which is low compared with the OECD (Organization
for Economic Co-operation and Development) of average of 9.4 per cent,"
it noted.

"The OECD projects that public expenditure on pensions in Canada will
only increase to 6.3 per cent of GDP by 2050 – much lower than the 11.6
per cent of GDP projected for OECD countries on average."

The document also says Canada's public pensions "replace a relatively
modest share of earnings for individuals with average earnings"
compared with the OECD average of 34 countries; that is, about 45 per
cent of earnings compared with the OECD's 54 per cent.

"Canada stands out as one of the countries with the smallest social security contributions and payroll taxes."

The Harperites claim that they are making up the gap with Tax Free Savings Accounts. But the review raises serious concerns about the overall efficacy of TFSA's:

The document notes that participation rates for TFSAs rise with
income, with only 24 per cent of those making $20,000 annually or less
contributing, compared with 60 per cent in the $150,000-plus bracket.

The review also acknowledges "it is still too early to assess their effectiveness in raising savings adequacy."

The report is another example of the Harper government ignoring its own expertise. If the information falls outside Stephen Harper's ever shrinking frame of reference, it is ignored. Benjamin Perrin reminded us this week that Mr. Harper does this to his own detriment.

Saturday, August 22, 2015

The Harper Party used to be be able to count on the support of veterans. That was because they made the right noises. But, as Preston Manning said, "Words don't mean much to Stephen."

That's a lesson that Canada's veterans have learned to their own chagrin. Tom Beaver and Ron Clarke have taken that lesson to the campaign trail and joined the Anyone But Harper Brigade. They quote former Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier:

“I do not think we had any idea the scale and scope of what the impact
would be. I truly do not. This is beyond a medical issue. I think many
of our young men and women have lost confidence in our country to
support them.”

Beaver and Clarke then go onto enumerate the reasons why veterans have lost faith in the Harper government:

Friday, August 21, 2015

That's what you get, Shakespeare wrote, when first you practice to deceive. One lie follows another. That's certainly what happened in the Prime Minister's Office. Michael Harris writes:

It is becoming increasingly obvious that NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair
had it right: the CPC code of conduct is not taken from the Bible or
some list of sacrosanct conservative principles. It’s taken from the
Criminal Code. Canada has returned to the Mulroney era, when everything
was okay unless it was illegal — notwithstanding Judge William Parker’s
ruling in the Sinclair Stevens case. Even the appearance of conflict,
the judge wrote, had to be avoided to maintain public trust in the
system. Canadians now trust discount sushi more than they do Parliament
under Harper.

And despite Wright’s vaunted reputation as an upright man, his
defence of his actions in the Duffy affair displays the same ethical
bankruptcy and dizzying sense of entitlement that emanated from the very
heart of Stephen Harper’s office. This is David Dingwall’s chewing gum
to the power of ten. When asked by Donald Bayne why he lied to the PM
about his payout to Duffy, Wright said it wasn’t a “bad
misrepresentation.” That euphemism could stop a charging rhino.

What it comes down to -- and Jack Layton warned us of this long ago -- is that you can't take Stephen Harper at his word:

Bottom line? Canadians can’t trust a single statement from a party that
thinks perception is reality and actively promotes falsehoods when they
are deemed to be in the government’s interest. And if you doubt that,
consider the absurdity of the conflict between the testimony of Nigel
Wright and the RCMP statement of former Harper PMO legal counsel
Benjamin Perrin.

Mr. Harper keeps insisting that this election is about leadership. But a leader you can't trust is no leader. And a leader who insists that, when he does something it's legal, is merely the ghost of Richard Nixon. In the end, Nixon became entangled in his own web.

Thursday, August 20, 2015

If you wonder how conservatives -- real conservatives -- are reacting to Stephen Harper's cross country tour, read David Krayden over at ipolitics. Krayden writes that he will vote Conservative -- not because of Stephen Harper, but in spite of him and a campaign that is all about him:

At any rate, it’s misleading to talk about a Conservative party campaign
in 2015. This is a Stephen Harper campaign. If you understand that, you
understand the thrust behind the ‘Just Not Ready’ ad: the veiled
suggestion that Trudeau can have the office once Harper is done with it.
This campaign just doesn’t put the leader front and centre — it focuses
entirely on Stephen Harper, apparently excluding all other candidates.
When Harper was in Vancouver last week, he stood — alone — against the
backdrop of the Pacific Ocean. No incumbent MPs or earnest candidates by
his side. The slogan attached to his podium was about him; it didn’t
even mention the party.

Krayden long ago reached the conclusion that Harper is not who he claims to be:

At any rate, he’s leading a party that is conservative in name only. In a
July pre-campaign announcement, Harper proudly claimed that the
introduction of his government’s Universal Child Care Benefit was a
“historic day” for Canada. And so it was — it was the day that a serving
Conservative PM decided to define his legacy and political prospects in
terms of how much money he’s willing to dump on the taxpayers who gave
it to him in the first place.

Harper has already cleared the caucus of social conservatives: the
list of Conservative MPs not running again is a Who’s Who of
evangelical, assertively pro-life legislators in Canadian politics.
Harper and the keen kids in the PMO have intimidated this crew for
years.

Harper was never a social conservative. Once, he was a libertarian.
Now he’s a libertarian who thinks big government — big Harper government
— is the answer to all of Canada’s problems. He has become a living,
breathing oxymoron.

Some might be tempted to remove the first two syllables of that last word. But the truth is that Stephen Harper is too smart by half. The Duffy trial has revealed how morally bankrupt the Harper government really is. Nigel Wright's blood is in the water. Ray Novak will be the next to bleed publicly.

The question is, "Will Harper be part of the carnage?" If there are enough people like Krayden willing to vote for him, Stephen may escape Nigel's and Ray's collective fate.

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Nigel Wright, we are told, is a very intelligent and righteous man. He has put a lot of effort into establishing his reputation as such. But Donald Bayne, Mike Duffy's lawyer, has been shredding that reputation. Alan Freeman writes:

Nigel Wright cuts a curious figure. Ramrod-straight, athletically
slim, he’s a quiet presence in the witness box — calm, never raising his
voice, even when clearly irritated by Bayne’s persistent questioning.
He seems thoughtful, even cerebral, as he recalls his actions in the
winter of 2013 as the Duffy scandal exploded in the PMO.

Yet Wright’s actions at the time clearly demonstrate that he was
single-minded — even ruthless — in doing the boss’s bidding and shutting
the scandal down, using any means at his disposal.

Government resources, Conservative party funds, his own bank account —
they were all interchangeable to Wright, all tools to to be used in
carrying out Stephen Harper’s wish to see the Duffy problem disappear.

“I didn’t think that this was a distinction that was that
significant,” Wright responded, when asked whether he saw any difference
between Duffy paying back the money himself — the story the public
initially was told — and being secretly reimbursed through the
Conservative Party Fund.

It is Wright's inability to make distinctions which is so deeply troubling. One gets the impression that his ambition overtook his conscience. It's an old story. From Christopher Marlowe through Goethe down to Stephen Vincent Benet, it's about a man selling his soul and knowing what he was doing.

Most of the time the story ends tragically -- though in Benet's story, Jabez Stone had a good lawyer to get him off the hook. The irony is that Nigel Wright is supposed to be a very good lawyer. In the end, that may count for nothing.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Thomas Mulcair wants to abolish the Senate outright. Stephen Harper wants to kill it through neglect. Both men propose to ignore the Supreme Court's direction on how change -- or abolition -- should be accomplished. But, if either man pays any attention to polls, he may want to re-think his position. BJ Siekierski writes:

Across the political spectrum, Canadians trust their top court more than
they do possibly any other Canadian institution, and certainly more
than Parliament. And though they may not always agree with every
decision, a majority think the Court has generally had a positive effect
on the country as a whole as it protected their rights and freedoms.

The poll, which was done by Angus Reid, reveals that:

[m]ore than twice as many Canadians express ‘a great deal’ or ‘quite a
lot’ of confidence in the Supreme Court as express such levels of
confidence in Parliament (61 per cent versus 28 per cent,
respectively).”

“Confidence in politicians (12%) and political parties (13%) is even
lower, but the institution in which Canadians have the least faith is
the Senate. Just one-in-ten respondents (10%) have ‘a great deal’ or
‘quite a lot’ of confidence in the scandal-plagued Red Chamber.”

Notwithstanding a level of confidence in the Senate that barely
registers, however, 50 per cent of Canadians agreed with the
change-inhibiting Supreme Court senate reference from April 2014, compared to only 20 per cent who disagreed. The remainder were unsure (10 per cent) or unaware of the ruling (20 per cent).

In the Court, it would seem, they have considerable trust.

Mr. Harper's contempt for the Court -- and Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, in particular -- is well documented. As a lawyer, Mulcair should know that he tangles with the court at his own peril. Mr. Harper has been reminded everyday of late that his contempt for courts has serious consequences. What matters is how they interpret facts, not how he interprets them.

As much as Mr. Harper and Mr. Mulcair may be galled by the men and women in robes, we are still a nation of laws, not men.

Monday, August 17, 2015

Harper Conservatives used to suffer from galloping certitude. They believed that they were paragons of virtue. Michael Harris writes:

Conservatives like to think they occupy the moral high-ground. There
is the greenhorn Trudeau, the ideologically obsessed Mulcair, and
somewhere on Mount Olympus, taking it all in with august superiority,
are the transcendent Harper Conservatives.

But now, thanks in large part to the Duffy trial, the Conservatives
now reside in the basement apartment of Canadian politics, exposed for
their lying, cheating, and stunning abuses of power. And in any
legitimate political system, that will have consequences.

It's getting really difficult to believe that the Harperites are the Party of Virtue. Nigel Wright may quote St. Mathew. But somehow it doesn't ring true:

My personal favourite was his claim to retroactive altruism, including a
biblical reference to how one goes about playing the Good Samaritan. He
gave the money to Duffy because he walked straight out of the Book of
Matthew as a man living his faith. Yes, Nigel, the expurgated edition of
Matthew 6 that goes something like this: “Let not the Left know what
the Wright is doing, so that your giving will be in secret.”

A key part of the Cons’ narrative has always been that Wright forked
over $90,000 to Duffy to spare Canadian taxpayers the expense. Where was
that public-spirited concern when Wright was ready to use
taxpayer-subsidized funds, $32,000 plus legal expenses, from the
Conservative Party Fund, to make his Duffy problem go away?

Gifts -- real ones -- don't come with strings attached:

Wright’s depiction of that $90,000 cheque as a “gift” is patently
absurd. Gifts don’t come with the advice to take it or face the
consequences. The ‘or else’ in this case was frying Duffy in a Senate
report, as opposed to going easy on him if he played ball with the PMO.
The trouble is, Duffy didn’t think that he owed the money and still
doesn’t. What’s more, neither Stephen Harper or Nigel Wright apparently
did either. But judge for yourself: does this sound like a man grateful
for the “gift” Wright kept insisting he accept?

Mr. Harper keeps repeating he knew nothing about what was going on -- although lots of other people did. His "media line" that Wright and Duffy kept everyone else out of the loop has been sunk. He and his followers may continue to insist they they are the Party of Virtue. But their world is changing.

Sunday, August 16, 2015

Scott Clark and Peter DeVries write that the economy is not in good shape. It hasn't been healthy for the last seven years:

The
economy has been seriously underperforming for the past seven years and
there’s little to suggest this will change over the next five.

Business fixed investment, as a share of GDP,
is virtually unchanged since 2008. The unemployment rate remains stuck
around 7 per cent, and both the labour force participation rate and the
employment rate are below 2008 levels. These trends are dragging down
the growth potential of the Canadian economy, which is estimated at
around 2 per cent a year, down from 3 per cent.

Unfortunately, when it comes to economic policy, all three of the major parties are entangled in the web of neo-liberalism:

The Conservatives’ growth strategy has always
been clear — cut taxes, cut spending, balance the budget, cut the size
of government, hope the U.S economy recovers, and pray for higher oil
prices. The entire April budget is based on this failed strategy and on
projections that are pure fantasy.

What is strange is that the Liberals and NDP
are twisting themselves into knots to put together growth strategies
that are supposed to be different from that of the Conservatives, while
at the same time adopting the Tory orthodoxy that all deficits are bad,
all debt is bad, and small government is good.

A credible long-term growth strategy should
focus on strengthening the economic efficiency of the economy. This
would require renewed federal-provincial trust and co-operation, with
strong federal leadership — something that has been painfully lacking
for years.

It would require, too, an acknowledgement that
the tax system has become a serious impediment to economic growth and
must be simplified. But it will take real political courage to remove
inefficient and unjustifiable tax entitlements.

If we can negotiate international free trade
agreements, then why is it so difficult to create a real economic union
in Canada, with free movement of goods and services among provinces? Our
infrastructure at all levels of government (especially municipal) is
collapsing and a national financing strategy is needed to begin
rebuilding it. We need a national environmental and energy strategy that
includes developing new energy-saving technologies.

Canada is -- or used to be -- a federation. Until we return to that notion, our economic future is bleak.

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Stephen Marche is a Canadian journalist who writes for American publications. In this morning's New York Times, he provides Americans with some background information on Canada's ongoing federal election and current prime minister:

THE prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, has called an election for Oct. 19, but he doesn’t want anyone to talk about it.

He
has chosen not to participate in the traditional series of debates on
national television, confronting his opponents in quieter, less public
venues, like the scholarly Munk Debates and CPAC, Canada’s equivalent of
CSPAN. His own campaign events were subject to gag orders until a
public outcry forced him to rescind the forced silence of his
supporters.

Mr.
Harper’s campaign for re-election has so far been utterly consistent
with the personality trait that has defined his tenure as prime
minister: his peculiar hatred for sharing information.

Marche then goes on to document Harper's attempts over almost a decade to ensure Canadian ignorance:

But the nine and half years of Mr. Harper’s tenure have seen the
slow-motion erosion of that reputation for open, responsible government.
His stance has been a know-nothing conservatism, applied broadly and
effectively. He has consistently limited the capacity of the public to
understand what its government is doing, cloaking himself and his
Conservative Party in an entitled secrecy, and the country in ignorance.

Mr.
Harper’s war against science has been even more damaging to the
capacity of Canadians to know what their government is doing. The prime
minister’s base of support is Alberta, a western province financially
dependent on the oil industry, and he has been dedicated to protecting
petrochemical companies from having their feelings hurt by any
inconvenient research.

In
2012, he tried to defund government research centers in the High
Arctic, and placed Canadian environmental scientists under gag orders.
That year, National Research Council members were barred from discussing
their work on snowfall with the media. Scientists for the governmental
agency

Environment Canada, under threat of losing their jobs, have been
banned from discussing their research without political approval.
Mentions of federal climate change research in the Canadian press have
dropped 80 percent. The union that represents federal scientists and
other professionals has, for the first time in its history, abandoned
neutrality to campaign against Mr. Harper.

His
active promotion of ignorance extends into the functions of government
itself. Most shockingly, he ended the mandatory long-form census, a
decision protested by nearly 500 organizations in Canada, including the
Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the
Canadian Catholic Council of Bishops. In the age of information, he has
stripped Canada of its capacity to gather information about itself. The
Harper years have seen a subtle darkening of Canadian life.

Harper's single minded focus, Marche writes, has been twofold: to close the Canadian mind and to change the essential nature of the country. This election, therefore, is seminal:

Whether or not he loses, he will leave Canada more ignorant than he
found it. The real question for the coming election is a simple but
grand one: Do Canadians like their country like that?

Friday, August 14, 2015

When the Duffy trial re-opened this week, a 426 page binder of emails was introduced into evidence. Doanld Savoie writes that what they tell us is that:

Staffers from the Prime Minister’s Office roamed the corridors of the
Senate as if it were an extension of their office. Audit reports were
regarded as little more than briefing notes to be carefully managed by
the centre. What truly matters in government now is the ability to
manage the “blame game,” and it seems that only those operating at the
centre have the required political clout to dictate how it should be
managed. If PMO staffers think that they are free to tell the Senate how
it should go about its work, one can only imagine what it must be like
for ministers, their staffs and senior public servants whose careers are
tied directly to the wishes of the prime minister.

The concentration of power in the Prime Minister's Office isn't new. It began with Pierre Trudeau. However, under Stephen Harper:

We have created a two-tier system of government in Ottawa, or an
upstairs-downstairs to governing. More to the point, governing from the
centre has created a fault line in the government where things that
matter to the prime minister and his immediate advisers are brought
above the line and dealt with quickly and effectively. Only the prime
minister and his advisers will decide what belongs above the fault line.
It can be anything from a decision to go to war while not consulting
the relevant ministers – let alone the cabinet – down to a $90,000
problem considered sufficiently important to generate 450+ pages of
e-mails. Under these circumstances, why would anyone other than a career
politician want to run for Parliament?

The e-mails are revealing in many ways.
There is no evidence that the bureaucracy from the Privy Council Office,
the Canada Revenue Agency or other departments was involved or even
consulted. One would think, for example, that the CRA could have
provided some advice on residence status under the Income Tax Act.

What
does not matter to the prime minister and his advisers is pushed down
below the fault line. Here, ministers and departments are expected to
run on their tracks and not create fodder for the blame game. Here,
public servants are also expected to attend countless meetings and deal
with a growing array of oversight bodies that would not be tolerated in
any other sector.

With Parliament
losing relevance, with regional ministers no longer enjoying standing
either inside government or in their region, with nothing of substance
belonging to line ministers and their departments any more and with the
concentration of political power at the centre, governing has become a
process of political and economic elites talking to other political
elites. This is where the public interest now takes shape, not through
evidence-based policy advice.

Stephen Harper boasted that we wouldn't recognize Canada when he was through with it. Donald Savoie believes that it is barely recognizable now. If Mr. Harper is re-elected, it will be beyond repair.

Thursday, August 13, 2015

It's clear from yesterday's testimony that Nigel Wright is a good soldier. He will do his best to ensure that, during the course of Mike Duffy's trial, Stephen Harper will remain -- literally and legally -- hidden away at the North Pole. Michael Harris writes:

Wright will defend both his class and his party. His class is Bay
Street, his party is the boys in blue. He will do nothing heroic on
behalf of the Canadian people, and he will do nothing to damage the
prime minister for whom he once worked as a “wheel dog” — a coinage
Stephen King fans will recognize.

That’s why on Day One of what could turn into a marathon stint on the
stand, Wright revealed little more than his reflexive generosity as a
public servant. The rich and well-connected have a way of turning
everything they do into a virtue. Even their philanthropy is strategic.
It remains to be seen how Wright’s philanthropy can be Duffy’s criminal
act.

And that's the rub. Duffy has been charged with accepting a bribe. Wright calls his $90,000 cheque an act of charity. What is clear is that cheque was meant to buy Duffy's silence. However, when Stephen Harper appointed Mike Duffy to the Senate, he bought his mouth. It was a travelling mouth that journeyed from coast to coast to coast, whipping up support for individual Conservative MP's and the party in general.

But, when Duffy leaked emails to colleagues, it became clear that his silence couldn't be bought. It will be up to Donald Bayne to prove that Duffy is not guilty of criminal wrong doing. Or that someone else is. And, if that someone else is Wright, the trail leads directly back to the prime minister.

Regardless of the outcome, it's clear that the PMO was thoroughly infected by a culture of deceit. And one man is responsible for that.

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Newly released research has revealed that the Harper government's job creation record -- put in historical perspective -- is nothing to brag about. But its record of job creation for young people is undeniably dismal. Armine Yalnizyan writes:

If you look at the proportion of people working by age group, this job
recovery has been skewed toward Canadians aged 55 and over. Young people
have seen almost no increase in their employment rate and, as you're
about to read, the quality of those jobs has deteriorated. This is all
the more striking because the young population (aged 15-24) did not
grow, while the population of those aged 55 and over has grown by 22 per
cent since 2009.

While there was a bigger, more prolonged drop in the employment rate
of young workers in the wake of the 1990–1992 recession, today's young
workers started off from a lower level and have, as yet, not seen any
"recovery." Between 2008 and 2012, almost 30,000 people
aged 15-24 wanted work but were not in the labour force and had
returned to school; but this number has been falling off and has now
returned to 2005 levels. We cannot compare these trends to what happened
in the 1990s due to data limitations. We can only hope these
investments in human capital will ultimately pay off, for the students
and for society.

But, thus far, this recovery has been notable in its absence of job
growth and steady job opportunities for young people. Between October
2008 and July 2009, young workers lost 185,000 full-time and 32,000
part-time jobs. Since then, they have recovered only 15,000 full-time
jobs, though the number of part-time jobs is almost back to
pre-recession levels. However, over the course of the past year, they
lost 31,000 part-time jobs and added almost no new full-time jobs.

Yesterday, Kathleen Wynne and Stephen Harper did battle over the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan. Wynne said the plan was needed by young workers -- part of the newly dubbed precariat -- whose new normal is precarious contract or self employment. They will not get workplace pensions. Thirty years in and out with a gold watch is gone. They will know many employers in a work life that will span more than thirty years. Stephen Harper's response was:

I am delighted to see, quite frankly, that our refusal to co-operate with the imposition of this tax is making it more difficult for the Ontario government to proceed.

The day is coming when the young will take out their anger on the fat, old men who stand in their way and the system that is rigged against them.

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Stephen Harper may be defeated in the upcoming election because the economy has tanked. But, Ralph Surette writes, there are other reasons -- better reasons -- to send him packing:

This is not an election like any other. What's at stake is nothing less
than the integrity of Canada's most fundamental features -- the justice
system, the electoral system, the public service, the tax system and
Parliament itself -- all of which Harper has relentlessly assaulted and
would complete the job of reducing to his personal playthings if only
enough people could be kept deep enough in the dark to give him one more
majority.

It has been a mark of Harper's manipulative genius to keep all this
under the radar. It has also been the signal failure of the opposition
parties to raise their sights and crystallize these crucial arguments
against him. (Thursday's leaders' debate brushed past all this -- a
segment on "democracy" dealt mainly with electoral reform, the Senate,
the role of MPs and so on).

Along with the dismantled watchdog bodies, the fired and muzzled
scientists, the harassment of charitable organizations with tax audits,
the totalitarian instruction to federal librarians to "demonstrate
loyalty" to the regime even when off duty, the dismissal of evidence in
favour of ideology in policy and legislation, and on and on, you might
note this: cuts in staff at the Department of Justice are such that
legislation riddled with errors has been passed, usually hidden in
democracy-mocking omnibus bills. Some have been, and others probably
will be, knocked down by the Supreme Court.

The Harperist mentality is not to fix this, but rather to try harder
to rig the courts (so far even Harper's appointed judges have gagged at
his legal predations), as concerns rise in legal circles about some of
his appointments, including his latest to the Supreme Court, an Alberta
judge who was only a few years ago, as a law professor, blogging the
Harperist line.

Geoff Stevens writes that many Conservatives are appalled by Harper's behaviour. But they like his tax cuts. The fundamental question they face is: Can their votes be bought? Mr. Harper is betting that they can be.

Fifty-five years ago, John F. Kennedy famously said, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." If Canadians answer that question honestly, they will conclude that the best thing they can do for their country is to turf Mr. Harper.

Monday, August 10, 2015

Michael Harris writes that the Harper campaign has begun with some strange twists:

I’m not sure what democracy is anymore in Canada, but I’m pretty certain
it's got nothing to do with agreeing to get frisked and letting people
and dogs mess with your junk before you attend a political event. Do
they even do that in Myanmar?

Harper The Great and Powerful, he writes, is beginning to look like the Cowardly Lion. Even once firm supporters of Mr. Harper are turning on him. John Robson announced in Friday's National Post that he wouldn't be voting Conservative this time around:

Power has corrupted [Harper] and his party. I wrote nearly two years ago
that Harper is unfit for office because he lied to Parliament over the
Wright-Duffy affair, insolently telling incompatible tales five days
apart in October 2013, and lying about having contradicted himself.

Instead of recoiling from this cynical deceit, his party
enthusiastically embraced it. If they think him worthy of public trust,
they aren’t either.

It doesn’t matter where you look. The Tories talk tough in foreign
affairs and praise the military. But they gut defence to fund cynical
handouts. They rope in the rubes by feigning concern about traditional
marriage, abortion and God. But they do nothing. Indeed, when Health
Canada approved the abortion drug RU-486, this administration, which
takes credit for every sparrow that takes wing in Canada, suddenly hid
under the bed.

These people are not honourable. Indeed, they laugh at honour. They
cherish the low blow, the devious tactic, the unprincipled bribe, in a
relentless, sneering, partisan tone. People I know and like retweet
Pierre Poilievre with vicious glee. I weep for them and my country.

Behind all the bluster, they're running scared. As Bert Lahr famously asked in The Wizard of Oz:

Sunday, August 09, 2015

Elizabeth Thompson reported yesterday that those who are invited to attend one of Stephen Harper's "public" events are now required to keep their mouths shut:

Members of the public who attend Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s
campaign events are being required to agree to a gag order before they
can walk through the door, iPolitics has learned.

While attendance is by invitation only,
and attendees are vetted by the Conservative Party before receiving a
ticket, those who want to attend a campaign event in person are also
being asked to agree to a number of conditions including not to transmit
any description of the event or any images from it.

And his candidates are also being told to keep their mouths shut:

When Harper visited Belleville, Ontario
on Friday, the local newspaper was given an advance heads up by a
local Conservative organizer that he was coming but directed to only
send a photographer and advised the prime minister would not take any
questions from the media. Nor did the local Conservative candidate Jodie
Jenkins agree to repeated requests from the Belleville Intelligencer
for an interview.

Now, reporters are being barred from Harper's displays of "public" support:

On Tuesday, veteran Queens Park reporter Susanna Kelley was refused entry to a Harper campaign event.
While she arrived 20 minutes before the start of the event, she was
told she could not enter because RCMP sniffer dogs were not available to
check her out.

All of which suggests that the prime minister's mental health has been seriously compromised. Which begs the question, "Do we really want a man who displays symptoms of full blown paranoia occupying the highest office in the land?"

Saturday, August 08, 2015

This week, we were treated to a surreal commercial of Stephen Harper standing in front of a monitor with the Netflix logo on its screen.“Something you may not know about me is that I love movies and TV shows,” he said. "I’m 100 per cent against a Netflix tax.”

What’s puzzling is that he was speaking to a non-issue. Neither the
Liberals nor the New Democrats have said they would tax digital services
such as Netflix, a U.S. company that delivers movies online to Internet
users.

So who is Harper vowing to protect Netflix users from?

The short answer is no one. The longer answer
is that this doesn’t matter. In choosing to highlight Netflix, the
electioneering Conservatives are trying to create reality, not reflect
it.

In this Conservative reality, what Harper’s
political opponents actually say isn’t important. All that matters is
what voters think they said.

Conservatives have adopted Dr. Goebbels' playbook chapter and verse. Saying makes it so. And repetition turns falsehood into reality. That strategy was on display in this week's debate, when Mr. Harper claimed that the opposition parties would put an end to income splitting for seniors. It's true the Liberals and the Dippers are not happy with income splitting for families with children -- because the policy only benefits 15% of Canadians.

But Mr. Harper happily conflates the two policies. Details don't matter. Just as, in the last election, the details about the cost of those F-35's didn't matter. It was people like Kevin Page, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who paid attention to them.

Little lies and big lies. Mr. Harper believes they pave the wave to victory. And, in the past, they have.

Friday, August 07, 2015

There were no knockout punches last night. Stephen Harper droned on with his usual talking points. But nobody put him on the mat. Elizabeth May reminded us -- or should have reminded us -- of just how intelligent she is. She's also quick on her feet. Michael Harris writes:

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May looked a little better than anyone else
last night — perhaps because people have forgotten just how intelligent
she is. She was first to arrive with her daughter and grandson and was
the only leader to speak to the press. She reminded people that they
need to think about their vote, that Canadians are electing a Parliament, not a U.S.-style president.

May did particularly well on the economy section of the debate,
stressing that Canada is now in a recession, making it the exact wrong
time to practice the austerity preached by Stephen Harper. One of the
unexpected dividends from May’s overall strong performance is that it
makes the decision to exclude her from other debates looked patently
foolish. The Munk dudes need to seriously think it over.

And Justin Trudeau held his own. He, too, was quick on his feet:

He was articulate, substantive and just feisty enough to get in Stephen
Harper’s face on the economy. In one of his better jibes, he implored
Harper to stop sending government cheques to millionaires. (An old line,
but effective.) Trudeau scored points by reminding the often smug
leader of the Conservatives that Canada is the only country in the G-7
in recession.

And Thomas Mulcair, the front runner, made no mistakes. As a lawyer, he knows that Supreme Court decisions on the Senate and Quebec separation do not go his way. But he soldiers on, stuck with policies he did not make.

Stephen Harper looked tired and dull. But that's what his base thrives on. Like Dr. Goebbels, he keeps repeating the same lies -- the economy is in trouble because of international decisions; the opposition will nix income splitting for seniors.

And, sadly, his base keeps buying the falsehoods. Last night's debate didn't change the political landscape.

Thursday, August 06, 2015

Amidst all of the hullabaloo associated with dropping the election writ, the public has not noticed that Stephen Harper has appointed another man to the Supreme Court. It can't be accidental that Russell Brown, a law professor at the University of Alberta, has escaped public scrutiny.

As a law professor, Brown does not have a paper trail of decisions by which to judge his competence for the job. But he is a blogger. And, while it's no crime to blog, the opinions on his blog raise serious questions about his ability to administer justice impartially. Jeff Sallot writes:

In various blog posts
Brown has described Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau as “unspeakably
awful,” characterized the Anglican Church as a collective of
“eco-pagans” and dissed the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet’s
Buddhists, as “not a nice man”.

In another post, Brown wrote that those who depict Harper as scary
political figure with a hidden right-wing agenda were misreading him.
“Admittedly,” he added, “I harbour some hope for a hidden agenda, but I
doubt it’s going to happen.

Brown’s other targets included the Ontario Liberal government’s “hot
air” environmental policies and the “puritanical functionaries” who run
human rights commissions.

Clearly, Professor Brown is Stephen Harper's kind of judge -- as, most assuredly, Beverley McLachlin is not. Consider, for a moment, Chief Justice Brown. And consider that Stephen Harper has corrupted every institution he has touched. The institutions he hasn't been able to corrupt he has killed.

Wednesday, August 05, 2015

For years, Andrew Nikiforuk has warned that building an economy based on bitumen is monstrous folly. Now the folly has come home to roost. Nikiforuk reminded his readers about what the Canadian historian Harold Innis had written about resource traps:

Innis, our greatest historian, said that Canada had a resource addiction
problem: it got hooked on the raw export of trees and rocks to global
empires and then went on a mining binge, only to awake with no memory of
the destruction and no markets.

Whether the resource was furs or lumber or asbestos, the story always ended the same way.

More recently, the American scholar Terry Lynn Karl turned her attention to what happens in petro-states:

[She] wrote that "Oil revenues are the catalyst for a chronic tendency
of the state to become overextended, over-centralized and captured by
special interests."

Karl herself warned
Tyee readers in 2014 that if low oil prices persisted, then Canadians
could expect to see "a rapidly declining Canadian dollar, greater
problems over pipelines, the reduction of future investments, and a very
bumpy oil ride, especially for Alberta."

And now the petro-state of Alberta, an impoverished kingdom with no
savings and unrelenting deficits, has arrived at the doorstep of
bitumen's future.

Stephen Harper has worked hard to make the Alberta model the Canadian model. We are now witnessing the predictable results of entrenching that model.

Tuesday, August 04, 2015

You have to wonder what planet Stephen Harper lives on. Yesterday, in Laval, he accused the entire NDP caucus of being a bunch of duds:

"That group of NDP MPs in the last four years is the most inefficient, ineffective group we’ve ever seen," he said in French. "There is not one star among those members of the Quebec NDP caucus," he told his audience.

Never mind that the majority of Quebec seats belong to the NDP. Scott Piatkowski, at rabble.cawrites:

By "inefficient and ineffective," he presumably meant that they
consistently voted against his government on behalf of their
constituents. But, the reality is that almost every one of these
incumbents, including the much maligned Ruth Ellen Brosseau,
has done great work in Ottawa and in their constituency and therefore
stand to be re-elected. They could be joined by at least five new NDP
MPs. Clearly, someone thinks that they are efficient and effective, and
that someone is the people who elected them (the people for whom Harper
has such apparent contempt).

What's more to the point, Harper's eye for duds is pretty obvious:

Harper thinks he knows what a star looks like, but his record suggests
otherwise. He's hand-picked Dean Del Mastro, Paul Calandra and Pierre
Polievre to be his Parliamentary Secretaries (or professional standins).
He appointed Patrick Brazeau, Don Meredith, Pamela Wallin and Mike
Duffy to the Senate. He made Vic Toews a judge and Peter Penashue a
cabinet minister. He chose the late Arthur Porter to oversee Canada's
spy agencies. With a record of such impeccable judgment, he's obviously
well qualified to tell Quebec voters how they should vote.

And, yesterday, he accused Rachel Notley of not being able to present a budget:

“The new NDP
government … they can’t present a budget, but what was the first thing
they did? They raised taxes and that’s a disaster,” Harper said.

Notley, whose province is dealing with the impact of a steep drop in
oil prices, has delayed the release of a provincial budget until this
fall. She has also moved to increase income taxes on anyone making more
than $125,000 a year effective Oct. 1.

He did not mention that his government delayed its budget. If he had raised taxes, it might have been a balanced budget, instead of the lie he is currently peddling. But Harper got to where he is by throwing stones at his opponents, not by telling the truth.

Monday, August 03, 2015

Yesterday, Stephen Harper said that he was forced to begin his seventy-seven day election campaign because the other parties had started campaigning early. And, he said, parties should pay for campaigns themselves. It's truly remarkable that he can say this kind of stuff with a straight face. Michael Harris writes:

Reality check? His own re-election campaign, using public money,
began in 2011. The early election call will add millions of dollars to
the $375 million that a 37-day campaign would have cost — and the
taxpayer will be paying for all of it. Harper just wants to suck a ton
more public money into the whole exercise, not less.

This PM is incapable of getting it out straight. Has he forgotten
about that cuddly picture of Pierre Poilievre staring down at all those
government cheques as though he were gazing at his first born?

Clearly, Harper believes that, if he keeps piling it higher and deeper people won't be able to see his record. He knows that, if Canadians look at his record, he'll be hiring a moving van on October 20th. Harris repeats a message he has been delivering for a long time:

Let me say it again. The moment any of the MSM, including the CBC,
begin to seriously deal with the true Harper legacy, that is the
beginning of the end of his decade-long debacle of corruption, deceit,
and institutional destruction.

Institutional destruction, yes. The Law Reform Commission, the
Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, the Long Form Census, the
Canadian Wheat Board, First Ministers’ meetings, rural mail delivery,
and the Office of the Inspector General at the Canadian Security and
Intelligence Service. All gone.

There is the phoney reputation for fiscal stewardship, when the
reality is a $200-billion increase in Canada’s national debt since 2006.
Everything is a shell game with these political carnies, from fake
balanced budgets to obscene public expenditures for the empty Economic
Action Plan. It was neither action nor a plan – just partisan propaganda
on the public dime.

There is the dubious distinction of owning the worst climate change
record in the industrialized world, including failing grades from former
Environment Commissioner Scott Vaughan.

The prime minister has always claimed that he's a steady hand at the tiller. The truth is that he has systematically set out to destroy parliamentary democracy in this country. He obfuscates the real story by telling whoppers -- like the ones he told yesterday.

Burger King tells us we can have things our way. Stephen Harper wants to have things his way.

Sunday, August 02, 2015

On Saturday, the Globe and Mail published an excerpt from John Ibbitson's recently published book, Stephen Harper. The piece begins with a pean to Harper:

He is a lion in autumn, weaker than in his prime, but still a force of
nature. He faces his fifth, and perhaps final, test as national leader.
But in a way, the result won’t matter. Whether Stephen Harper wins or
loses the general election of October 19 is moot. He has already
reshaped Canada. And Canada will not easily be changed back.

He has made the federal government
smaller, less intrusive, less ambitious. He has made Canada a less
Atlantic and a more Pacific nation.

He
has brought peace to a fractious federation. Under his leadership,
Canada speaks with a very different voice in the world. He has also
given us a very different politics – more intensely partisan, more
ideological, more polarizing. This, too, is unlikely to change, now that
people are used to it.

Peace? I'm not so sure. Later in the piece, Ibbitson writes of Stephen Harper's flaws. He's a man whose personal psychology has made him a disastrous choice for prime minister:

There are disagreeable aspects to Stephen Harper’s personality. He is
prone to mood swings. He can fly off the handle. He goes into funks,
sometimes for long periods. He is suspicious of others. The public is
aware of these traits mostly through what’s written and reported in the
media. In public, Harper is almost invariably calm, measured, and
careful in what he says and how he says it. Yet none of us, watching
him, have any difficulty believing that this closed, repressed
personality is capable of lashing out from time to time. We all get the
vibe. His personality also comes out in the tactics that the
Conservative Party uses against its enemies, both perceived and real –
which are, in a word, ruthless.

Another of Harper’s less attractive qualities is a perceived lack of
loyalty toward others. One-time political adviser Tom Flanagan points
out that Harper has betrayed or estranged many in the conservative
movement who were at one time senior to him – Joe Clark, Jim Hawkes,
Brian Mulroney, Preston Manning. This, Flanagan believes, is the product
of Harper’s need to dominate whatever environment he is in. “I think he
has this very strong instinct to be in charge,” he said. “He really
wants to be the alpha figure, and he’s achieved that. So part of that is
to dispose of anyone who might be considered to be a rival in some
sense or another.”

Flanagan also asserts that “there is a huge streak of paranoia in
Stephen. And he attracts people who have a paranoid streak. And if you
don’t have one to begin with, you develop it, because you’re constantly
hearing theories.” At its root, “looking back, there’s a visceral
reluctance to trust the motives of other people,” Flanagan concludes.
“He often overcomes his initial suspicions and will sign on to other
people’s ideas. But the initial response is always one of suspicion.”
Flanagan believes Harper is prone to depression. “He can be suspicious,
secretive, and vindictive, prone to sudden eruptions of white-hot rage
over meaningless trivia,” he wrote in 2014, “at other times falling into
week-long depressions in which he is incapable of making decisions.”

Not disagreeable, Mr. Ibbitson. Dangerous. Such a man is capable of making momentous mistakes. And Harper has made many. Should he receive a fourth mandate? I think not.

Saturday, August 01, 2015

The former head of Elections Canada, Jean Pierre Kingsley, says that Stephen Harper is "gaming the system." And Kory Teneyche, the former head of Sun News, says that,when Mr. Harper has a campaign event, attendance will be by "invitation only."

Ten years ago, no one would have thought that a prime minister could treat the voting public with such brazen contempt. But this is Stephen Harper. Contempt is in his DNA. Elizabeth Thompson reports:

While all parties keep an eye on who is showing up for events,
largely for security reasons, most parties do not screen people before
they are allowed into the room to hear their leaders.

During the 2011 election campaign, there were a couple of incidents
where people who showed up to listen to Harper were turned away because
party workers discovered Facebook posts critical of Harper, pictures of
them posing with another party leader or a pro-NDP bumper sticker.

About Me

A retired English teacher, I now write about public policy and, occasionally, personal experience. I leave it to the reader to determine if I practice what I preached to my students for thirty-two years.